Java is Dead! Long Live Python!

Java by contrast, is dead. It has at least as much brain damage and misdesign as Python 2.x did, probably more; yet Sun has resisted tooth and nail all efforts to fix the known problems. Instead they keep applying ever more lipstick to this pig without ever cleaning off all the filth and mud it’s been rolling in for the last 12 years. They keep applying more perfume when what it really needs is a bath.

I tend to agree, specifically because of this argument (which interestingly enough just came up in a discussion over lunch with some friends):

I can’t think of another major language as old as Java that still attempts to maintain compatibility with version 1.0 of itself. In fact, I can think of only one language that attempts that (C#), and that one’s half Java’s age. Unless we’re willing to make the hard choices and abandon the legacy as Python has, Java is doomed to the fate of C++ and Cobol: a tool for programmers with long white beards who grew up with the language and have learned all its arcana by gradual accretion and who spend their lives maintaining code written a decade or more ago. Meanwhile a new generation of programmers will abandon Java in favor of more nimble modern languages like Python just as we abandoned C++ in our youth in favor of Java.

hopefully this will change when the modularity will be finalized in JSE7 as pointed out by Mark Reinhold in his yesterday keynote @ Devoxx - the bad thing is that all the significant language changes like closures and reified generics are postponed

hopefully this will change when the modularity will be finalized in JSE7 as pointed out by Mark Reinhold in his yesterday keynote @ Devoxx - the bad thing is that all the significant language changes like closures and reified generics are postponed

About

This is a post from Stefan Tilkov’s blog, originally published
on December 9, 2008. For more up-to-date content authored by me, check out my author page at innoQ which has more information about me and contains a list of published talks, podcasts and articles.